I DON’T SAY BYE.
Do you really retire, after you officially complete long innings of service of say 30-35 years?
Yes you retire as so and so, but not as a person or a human being.
I was motivated to do some social work after I retired. I was inspired by my friend and founder member, Shri Nilkanth Jambhekar, who brought an idea from Pune to start NRI Parents Association and we both worked hard to begin the move which was soon to become A SOCIAL MOVEMENT for the welfare of parents of NRIs. I continued this work relentlessly from July 20th 2002 for long seven years. I was lucky to have excellent cooperation and help from all the members, EC members and the Trustees of NRIPA. If I have
been able to establish this Association, the total credit goes to all the members and the team of EC and Trustees.
What we have achieved basically is to establish the Association on a sound footing. We have depended entirely on self help (Contribution from Members) in respect of getting finance for our activities. With a view to have more communication and social network between the members we had conducted small tours, picnics, music programmes, informative talks and festival celebrations. We also tried to help our members to get justice in VISA related matters and also to get passports in emergency. We have tried
to reach out to many NRIPAs of the country and also tried to give a global status to our Assn. Whenever any NRIPA member needed help, our members were ready to give their services.

Strengths: Main strength is the devoted and sincere members who conduct the affairs of the association. We had some differences which is normal in any group but we always forgot the differences, agreed to differ, and went forward with activities that bound us together.

Weaknesses: Our main weakness was our failure to enroll as many members as possible in this big city of Vadodara. Here every street will have at least few parents of NRIs, but we could not effectively communicated with them and bring them in this social movement. Our approach was rather conservative. The language barrier of not using Gujarati as much as we can was also a factor that inhibited many to join who did not understand English or Hindi.

Future Dream- I foresee a strong NRIPA with at least thousand members in next five years. It’s my dream to have our own office space, library and if possible a hall where we can have activities. If we can take up a project to construct a hostel for NRIs somewhere near Airport (International), it will be a boon to many NRIs / PIOs visiting Baroda.

I once again thank all the members for their excellent cooperation to establish our NRIPA and carry out activities for seven years. I wish Dr. Om Juneja and his team, a great success in expanding the vision and activities of NRIPA. I am always available to serve the association.
Madhusudan Mehta
Ex- President NRIPA Gujarat Vadodara